The selective reductive amination of aliphatic aldehydes and cycloaliphatic ketones with tetragonal zirconium dioxide as the heterogeneous catalyst

Abstract

A selective reductive amination of aliphatic aldehydes and cycloaliphatic ketones is achieved with tetragonal zirconium dioxide (t-ZrO2) as the catalyst. With N, N-dimethyl formamide (DMF) as the solvent, low-molecular-weight amine source and reductant, a more than 99 % yield of N, N-dimethylpentan-1-amine or N, N-dimethyl cyclohexanamine was obtained when n-pentanal or cyclohexanone was used as the substrate. Particularly, the crystallographic structures exhibit a significant effect on catalytic performance where the tetragonal crystalline was preferable to monoclinic one during the reductive amination reaction. In addition, the recycling experiments of catalysts indicate that t-ZrO2 still kept a high catalytic activity even after being reused five times. From the result of DFT calculations, it is concluded that the crystalline of zirconium dioxide is closely related to the charge transferring rate between the catalyst and the adsorbed reactant. Finally, based on the experiment phenomena and simulation result, a possible reaction mechanism is proposed for the reductive amination of cyclohexanone.